site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   2738 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for January 6, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

4
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Is hockey exempted because it’s mostly white?

I'm not familiar with Hockey or how it plays into it. I would probably expect the opposite: for Black or Mexican players to get overrated because the league desperately wants a minority player to point to. Generally speaking, I mentally downgrade my expectations for most white prospects in Basketball-Football-Baseball because the demand for white sports heroes has outstripped the supply for basically a century now if you count Boxing (which, ironically, came back around to a decent number of white champions just in time for it to become culturally irrelevant). The "student of the game" thing is just icing on the cake really, but it tracks as an "intangible" that people will hang on a player they value for emotional reasons.

Hockey has similar rules to soccer and baseball in terms of the field of play — there are minimum and maximum rink width and length requirements but not one, standardized official rink size. The NHL rinks as a whole skew toward the smaller end of those tolerances.

Bigger rinks favor speed and smaller rinks favor strength, not that both aren’t broadly useful. So, smaller players aren’t always given their due by NHL teams. The 5’10” Kaprizov wound up on the Wild’s radar when a flight delay prompted some of their scouts to check out a Metallurg Novokuznetsk game in which Kaprizov was playing given they were stuck in Russia for another night. He would go on to sign the largest contract extension for a second-year player in NHL history.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats